Unmanned Autonomous Aerial Navigation in GPS-Denied Environments

Published in: Engineering, Integration, and Alliances for a Sustainable Development. Hemispheric Cooperation for Competitiveness and Prosperity on a Knowledge-Based Economy: Proceedings of the 18th LACCEI International Multi-Conference for Engineering, Education and Technology
Date of Conference: July 27-31, 2020
Location of Conference: Virtual
Authors: Noshin Habib (University of Texas at El Paso, US)
Angel Flores-Abad (University of Texas at El Paso, US)
Josué Martinez-Martinez (Universidad Ana G. Méndez - Recinto de Gurabo, PR)
Diego Aponte-Roa (Universidad Ana G. Méndez - Recinto de Gurabo, PR)
Albert Espinoza (Universidad Ana G. Méndez - Recinto de Gurabo, PR)
Full Paper: #349

Abstract:

This work focuses on enhancing existing technology to support unmanned aerial vehicle navigation for the inspection of power plants. These inspections are a vital component of a power plant’s capability to function but can be costly and dangerous to do by humans. Therefore, it has been proposed to utilize a small, unmanned quadcopter integrated with autonomous navigation by using an alternate signal in place of GPS. The quadcopter can gain the ability to navigate to desired coordinates without the need for GPS, which can often be unavailable within these structures. The UAV uses an optical flow sensor to determine the ground velocity and x-y position, and sonar for measuring the altitude. Using ROS and MAVLink, the communication can be modified to use “fake GPS” data, instead of the actual GPS signal, to be published in the appropriate ROS topics to avoid GPS failures. The optical flow and fake GPS are filtered by an Extended Kalman Filter to get a better position estimation during navigation. Through this process, autonomous flight was successfully achieved without GPS.